Cultural differences often create an invisible barrier to effective execution. Whether the differences are international or merely inter-departmental, the clash of cultures can impair the ability of an enterprise to succeed. What’s worse, they often go unrecognized. An enterprise opening up a new office in another country discovers that its operations are not achieving expected results. They are using processes that they have used successfully for decades at home and never question their effectiveness in the new culture. Instead, they treat the symptoms by blaming the manager. After changing management a few times, they then withdraw altogether. They may never recognize that the underlying cause of the symptoms was a cultural difference that impaired the effectiveness of their proven process.

In other situations, the failure of the IT department to acknowledge the need for flexibility of an operating department causes the operating group to create their own solution. The new solution is not only inefficient from an enterprise perspective, but presents various security vulnerabilities which lead to exploitation by an adversary.

Rocky Mountain Technical Marketing, Inc. (RMTM) provides consulting to identity and resolve business process failures resulting from cultural differences. Cultural differences include national and regional differences, but also include behavior barriers that typically arise between departmental cultures (e.g., sales, accounting, or human resources) or among different generations of employees.

We work with clients to identify these often-hidden barriers that compromise the effectiveness of business processes that commonly overlook the friction created when processes cross cultural boundaries.

RMTM cross-cultural consulting includes the following:

 

International Operations Optimization

• Identify the reasons that proven processes fail when exported to other national/regional markets

• Modify processes to account for cultural differences

• Create communications plan to address cultural barriers

• Manage organizational change to resolve cultural differences

 

Inter-departmental Facilitation

• Identify the reasons that processes that cross departmental barriers fail

• Devise solutions to overcome barriers

• Create communications plan to address cultural barriers

• Manage organizational change to resolve cultural differences

 

Trans-generational Facilitation

• Facilitate understanding of unique values and motivators among different generations

• Create communications plan to address cultural barriers

• Develop management metrics that reflect effective motivators

• Manage organizational change to resolve cultural differences